


the beginning of your afterlife

by sweetspacebaby



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: AI universe, Allura Altea - Freeform, And classmates, And coworkers, I mean they're dead but still technically alive, Just best friends, M/M, Major character death - Freeform, Modern Universe, Shadam, Shiro and Keith are brothers, They're the main ship and focus but might focus on other characters now and then, Upload - Amazon Original, Upload AU, adashi, broganes, future universe, keith kogane - Freeform, kind of, may add more tags as the story develops, no romance between them, they're roommates
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-13
Updated: 2020-05-13
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:01:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24170989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sweetspacebaby/pseuds/sweetspacebaby
Summary: In a world of advanced technology, death is no longer something to fear as long as you apply for an upload plan. With a plan you get to spend the rest of your afterlife in the world of AI living in either a high-end hotel or lonely log cabin along with other uploads and with your own personal Angel answering your every beck and call. // This is an Adashi Upload AU where people have their conciseness uploaded into a virtual after life while being cared for a personal tech support agent known as an "Angel."
Relationships: Adam/Shiro (Voltron)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 10





	the beginning of your afterlife

Horizon, one of the many heavens where the best days of your life could be after it’s over.

With a well-planned upload, you can spend your afterlife still connecting with loved ones, while also making new friends to experience all that your heaven has to offer with. Some are like high-end resorts with ocean views out every window, while others could be your own little log cabin in the woods. Your heaven is what you make of it, before and after you die.

Yeah, the afterlife with Horizon is nice.

But honestly, it’s all just programmed rose-colored glasses when in reality the experience is just a fancy tech algorithm that can convert a human consciousness into code that gets download it into a server where it’s reborn into a computer-generated avatar. It’s pretty cool. It’s allowed the fear of death and missing out on the future to basically be nonexistent over the years. People now go through life dreaming about the carefree life of an upload instead of fearing of the unknown of what happens after death.

And the backbone of these heavens are the “angels” of the operation.

Minimum wage paid, living, breathing workers who sit at their desk for the day; clocking-in for their shifts, creating new uploads, assist current ones, and monitoring them to be sure everyone is technically alive and well and following the rules. As hands on as they are in the operation, angels are not allowed to tell uploads their names or anything about them in the living world, keeping the two worlds separate at all time except for contact between the upload’s family and friends.

This is Adam’s job. He’s been an angel for six years now and doesn’t mind it much and takes some pride in his work. His rejection rate for his unprepared uploads is low and he’s able to stay under his boss’s radar just enough to code in and work around whatever he can to keep them happy and keep him at a 4.8-star rating.

Yeah Adam likes his job, but it’s still just a job. It’s a 9-5, seven day a week job that’s part of his routine and pays his bills. His office isn’t much either, just a renovated warehouse with rows of desk on the “Angel” floor with each desk fashioned with three high speed monitors, keyboard, touch tablets, mic, earpiece, and VR glasses – everything an angel needs to do their job.

“Hey Adam,” Curtis calls out as his desk neighbor rounds the corner to start his day, “I see we’re starting early on worsening our blood-pressure today.”

Curtis was a good “angel” with a 4.4 rating. He was kind to his uploads who needed a shoulder, and tough on the ones that still had maturing to do. He was also someone Adam would seek out to vent to about some of the things that really got him at work, their credit-stealing boss being a popular topic.

Adam put his breakroom coffee on his desk and cut his eyes at Curtis as he sat down in front of his three monitors.

“My blood-pressure is just fine. Clean bill of health at every company physical.”

Curtis smirked as he huffed a small laugh, “Sure it is.” Right away his smirk falls. He squints at one of his monitors and leans in, “Hold on, I have someone trying to cheat the system to get in the premium hot tub again.”

“Is it boy genius?”

“Yep.” Curtis reached for his VR glasses and went straight into work mode.

Adam shook his head once his neighbor started to scold his upload and decided to get to work himself. He put in his earpiece, turned on his mic, and logged into his computers with his company ID.

Adam opened his “assignments” file and began to wake up all his uploads, greeting them and answering any questions they had as they started their day. At the bottom of the names there was one new upload waiting for him to begin creating it – Takashi Shirogane.

Adam clicked on the name and screens of coded memories popped up on one of his monitors and a blank avatar body on another. He clicked on one of the recent memory codes to play so that he could start his first step in the long process of collecting images to help build his upload’s avatar.

The first memory to play was one of Mr. Shirogane sitting in a hospital bed, staring at his hand that fisted in his lap and occasionally looking up at a doctor and another person in the room.

Too soon a memory. Adam skips backwards.

A few months back another memory starts to play that is what Adam is looking for.

This one is at the gym. Mr. Shirogane is working out in front of one of those mirror walls, doing a series of push-up burpees one handed. He’s not bad looking.

“He’s hot,” Curtis cuts in, halting Adam’s thoughts.

Adam sighs, “Yeah he might be hot, but he’s not making my job easy with creating his avatar. Guy seems to barely look at himself.”

“He didn’t have one already designed?” With uploading being a popular afterlife plan, not having a premade avatar was rare.

“Nope.”

“Weird, guess he really wasn’t expecting to be uploaded,” Curtis thought out loud. “How did he die?”

Adam looks over at the upload’s profile and skims for cause of death. “Infection.”

“You mean cancer?”

Adam shook his head. “Nope, it just says infection.”

Curtis looks closer at the bio confused, thinking he’s reading it wrong and needs to borrow Adam’s glasses. “Who dies from an infection nowadays?”

Adam just shrugs for a response; it’s been years since he let the causes of death bother his work. He pauses the gym memory on a frame where Mr. Shirogane is looking into the wall mirror, preparing to jump up from his push-up. He has white hair, cut short, gradually going into a buzz the closer it gets to his neck and a tuft of hair falling over his forehead. He had a long scar over his obviously broken nose and other scars on the arm he was working out and his legs. The arm he kept behind his back was covered in a compression sleeve and when the hand was seen, it was covered in a black glove. Adam screenshots his face and drags it over to the avatar screen so the algorithm could get to work as he plays more memories.

This one Mr. Shirogane is video calling the person that was in the hospital room with him in the first memory, looking more livelier this time. Adam learned that this upload went by “Shiro” and that this conversation was apparently giving this guy, who’s his brother, advice on how to ask his crush out.

“Keith, just ask him, it’s not that hard.”

That was a surprise, Adam was expecting his voice to be much deeper, kind of like the tone you would expect a muscle head would have. Instead, Shiro’s voice had a calming, pleasant tone to it, one you would want to hear when you’re having a bad day and need some sort of guidance.

“Yeah right,” Keith says as he exaggerates his eye roll, “says the guy that responded with ‘neat’ after he got his first ‘I love you,’ and then excused himself into the literal closet out of embarrassment.”

Shiro covers his face with his gloved hand to hide his reddening cheeks. “Ok, I admit my relationship history is not the best, but trust me, being forward is the way to go if this guy is as oblivious you say he is.”

Adam pauses the memory. He zooms in on the small reflective window on the holoscreen that’s framed inside the L-shape that Shiro’s open left palm and thumb is making. He drags a box over the Shiro’s easy-going smiling face and then drags it to the avatar window.

This is how Adam’s creation days go when there is no predownloaded avatar. He plays memories of new uploads as far as they can trace back, taking screenshots of their faces and dragging them over to their avatar. Now and then he would answer the calls of his current uploads – using them as small breaks, but most of them turn out to be just small technical issues he can fix without even answering or physically appearing in the afterlife.

After a few hours of skimming through Shiro’s 31 years of memories, Adam learns a lot about his new assignment that really sticks with him.

Shiro lost his mother when he was around two years old.

Adam found a grainy memory of her in the very small gaps of Shiro’s earlier memories and was able to clean it up for him for when Shiro would like to replay it after he settles into his new life. It’s just a simple memory – him and his mother finger painting together, she’s trying to teach him to paint a flower but he’s more interested in painting himself and getting all the colors in her long black hair. She looked like she was a kind woman, beautiful too. Adam tries to look her up in their system, maybe try and set something up for them to be able to see each other again and she can see how her son has grown over the years.

Shiro comes up as the only “Shirogane” in the Horizon system.

Luckily though he didn’t grow up without a mother.

Shiro’s dad, the one who he obviously got his physique from, remarried when he was seven and he seemed to consider his adoptive mom to be his actual mother and loved her just as much. This woman was pretty too, but she looked nothing like Shiro’s biological mom with short cut hair and a natural look that would intimidate people who didn’t know her. But Shiro still loved her and she loved him too, calling him her son since day one and always being there for him when he called for her.

But as much as he loved his parents, Shiro’s whole world seemed to be all about his little brother Keith that was born a year later. There were a lot of memories of the two together Shiro had filed away as important ones. The first time he held him as a baby, the time he taught him how to say ‘hippo,’ the time he helped their dad teach him to ride a bike, and the time he helped him hide the stray kitten he found and brought home from their parents.

Shiro thought of his little brother as his whole world because he was his whole world.

They lost their parents unexpectedly when Shiro was 20, and he quickly took over the role of Keith’s guardian while he was still a sophomore in college just trying to survive his Air Force training drills and complete a 10-page paper analyzing Virginia Woolf’s _To the Lighthouse_.

Maybe the unexpected deaths of Shiro’s parents were the reason why Adam couldn’t find any other “Shirogane” in the system.

Life just continued to deal Shiro a bad hand as it went on. He was just a young recruit in the middle of his first month of deployment when his base was air raided, causing him to lose his right arm and be covered in scars from flying shrapnel and burns. The recovery was hard on him, and the physical and mental therapy was even harder – the memory of Shiro breaking down and crying in his hospital bathroom after seeing his amputated arm for the first time really pulled at Adam’s work-mode heart.

This was his first amputee and war veteran upload, so the subject is a new territory for him.

Adam made sure to program scheduled therapy sessions for Shiro after he uploads in the system. If his battle with PTSD was tough when he was alive, there’s no telling how he would react after waking up in the afterlife.

Shiro’s life did start to brighten after his recovery and transition to civilian life. His brother Keith was accepted into college and then accepted into veterinary school, a memory that had him crying tears of joy. Shiro then went back to school himself and finished his studies, receiving a degree in criminal justice and was about to begin his training in the police academy.

But the happiness was short lived. Shiro’s memories started to be of him visiting the hospital more and more, a few even being of Keith calling 911 for him before going dark.

After review, Adam could tell that all he wanted to do in his life was take care of his little brother and help others that were suffering, even though he was suffering himself.

Adam had to take a breather after his research. It was a lot to process in the first few hours of his workday.

This is going to be an upload that’s going to stick with him and crack his work façade, and Adam knew it.

He made a quick run to the breakroom, giving an update to Curtis about the “hot gym guy,” eating whatever free energy bars he could get his hands on, and making himself another cup of coffee. Adam eventually goes back to his desk with his fifth cup of black breakroom coffee in hand and finds that everything is finally set for Takashi Shirogane to be uploaded into his afterlife in Horizon.

Adam set his drink down on his desk and started to skim over what all the algorithm could complied for Shiro’s avatar and settings, changing anything that the system read wrong. The first thing to change was Shiro’s blacked out prosthetic arm. This was his afterlife, and Adam thought that maybe Shiro would appreciate having his original arm back instead of prosthetic one. He looked over everything once more before taking in a deep breath and typing in a few more final codes on his keyboard. He then prepares his earpiece and mic before starting the uploading process.

“Hello Shiro.”

* * *

“There’s really nothing that can be done?”

Shiro sat on his hospital bed just at a loss for words, his brain still processing the news. The hospital room seemed so big and empty just from the shock of the news. The monitors reading Shiro’s vitals continued to beep in the silence, making every second feel like hours.

“I’m sorry Shiro,” his doctor signed from the chair that sat next to the foot of his bed. “But the infection has spread too far into your bones and muscles and it is slowly making its way to your brain. We could up your medication more, but all it would do is prolong the spreading by a month or so.”

Shiro could only stare at his fisted hand, hating the sight of the hospital band around his wrist. The entire year has been just him collecting hospital band after hospital band; he was beginning to hate the sight of the strips of plastic.

“How did it get this bad?”

“We think that it came from the stray shrapnel that was left in your shoulder. Once we took it out and your pain was gone, it was thought that you were fine. Nothing came up on the scanners or checkups.” Shiro’s doctor paused to solemnly rub the back of his neck. “That is till this past year with the pain steadily coming back and then when your seizure happened it made us dig deeper.” Shiro’s doctor really tried his best to be sympathetic about the situation, but he knows Shiro doesn’t like his results to be sugarcoated and would rather hear the facts.

“The pain I’ve been feeling, the heart attacks, the seizer, everything is all because this infection was eating at me?”

“Correct.”

Shiro just sat in silence, still processing that he was really dying, and it was too late to fix it even with today’s technology. All this time he just thought the phantom pain was back or his stress levels were triggering something. There was so much he still wanted to do – see his little brother finish college and walk across the stage, go to the police academy and start his new chapter in life, and find someone to settle down with and hopefully start a family of his own with. But now he can’t.

“What now,” Shiro asked, breaking the silence to make his brain calm down after hearing the beeps of his monitor pick up slightly.

“Now,” Shiro’s doctor sighed, “maybe think about getting an upload? You’re still undecided on that in your medical file.”

Right, an upload. This was something Shiro didn’t really like thinking about when asked during his file reviews.

None of his parents got an upload, so why should he? Why would he want to spend the rest of his consciousness alone in an afterlife that wasn’t even real?

“I need to talk to my brother about it.”

“Understandable,” his doctor agreed. “When you two are done just let me know. For the time being I want to keep you here for your benefit. I’m worried that if you go home even the slightest bit of stress may agitate the infection.”

Shiro just nodded his head. His doctor’s wristband started to beep, signaling that another patient needed him. He got up from his chair, giving Shiro’s covered shin a pat of reassurance.

“I know uploading probably wasn’t on your list of things to think about, but who knows,” Shiro’s doctor reassured, “with the new experiments going on now, you may get a second chance in the future with a new body.” With that small bit of support, he said his goodbye and left the room.

Shiro fell back against his hospital bed, staring up at the lights while counting each beep his monitor made, trying to keep the pattern steady. He lost count after 57 and let his mind just go blank. He needed to be numb to do what he had to do.

Shiro held out his hand, a hologram of a phone screen activating between his open palm and out-stretched thumb. As if the screen had a mind of its own, it switched from the default “Welcome” screen to Shiro’s contact list, then scrolling down to the K’s of his contacts. A name is selected, and the call is placed with the name “Keith” on the screen. Shiro closes his hand to make the screen disappear, but the audio of the call still plays from his wristband.

“Hey Shiro,” Keith called out from the wristband. “No video, so I guess you’re still at the hospital?”

“Yeah,” Shiro answered, nodding his head to no one. “Are you at work?” He could hear the muffled sound of dog’s barking in the background, giving him the answer.

“Yeah, Allura needed someone to cover her shift today so I’m just at the desk. What did the doctor say? Did they find out what’s been causing your attacks?”

A lump got stuck in Shiro’s voice as he tried to answer. Yeah, they found out was wrong and it was something that he wasn’t ready for. “Uh, they’re keeping me here for further surveillance,” he lied. Telling Keith what his doctors found over the phone while he was at work was not how this needed to be done.

Keith responded with a small “oh” and let the line go quiet.

“When is your shift at the clinic over? I need to talk to you about something.”

“What is it about?”

Shiro waited a bit before speaking. “It’s something I would rather talk about face-to-face.” Cause it needed to be done face-to-face.

Keith went silent for a moment; he wasn’t stupid and was good at reading between the lines. This made Shiro begin to worry that he already knew what was wrong and his monitor started to pick up its rhythm again.

“I get off in three hours,” Keith finally answers, his tone a bit more somber now. “Is that ok?”

“Yeah that’s ok.”

“Ok.”

Shiro nodded his head. “Bye Keith.” Such a simple signoff that he’s said many times before, but this time it just hit him much harder.

Keith ended the call with no reply, leaving Shiro alone with his empty thoughts again, counting the beeps of his monitor and looking up at the lighting.


End file.
